If you’ve ventured through the depths of TikTok lately, you’ll undoubtedly have come across people – who may or may not be dressed as pirates – singing sea shanties. It seems like an arbitrary choice, but if one considers that we may be riding out the last few waves of this pandemic, the sea shanty trend seems oddly appropriate.
When it comes to bonding experiences, there’s something special about singing together. Now, though, as the pandemic surges across the globe for what is hopefully the last time, we’re forced, once again, to keep apart. It’s for that reason that many have taken to singing together on platforms like TikTok– Their songs of choice just happen to be, recently anyway, often old sea shanties. And before you ask why this particular type of song is also seeing a whole new wave, consider how well they can be sung by a group.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that these songs take on a whole new form when sung in unison – the possibilities for expansive harmonies mean people can be extremely creative with them, or fall in with one of the voices already there.
According to Gita Jackson (Vice), the trend started when Nathan Evans, a 26-year-old Scottish postal worker, uploaded his rendition of a New Zealand Whaling song called “Wellerman”, which then went viral with a speed at which only a TikTok video can. hundreds of others felt compelled not only to share the video with friends, but to join him in song.
Jackson writes that sea shanties were originally inspired by depressing labour conditions, and though the way we work now has changed entirely, being stuck at home while you do it can be pretty depressing too. Not to mention isolating. Perhaps the stories these songs tell serve as a welcome distraction, and the opportunity they give us to bond with other singers – even as they isolate in their own homes – is just too good to pass up right now.
It helps that some of these tunes really do slap.
So, in case you haven’t yet caught up on the TikTok sea shanty trend, here are some of our favourites for you to sing along to if you need a pick-me-up.
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